On Love

I flew home to the motherland for my uncle’s wedding this weekend.  An outstanding time was had by all (despite Southwest’s tardiness and the rental car agency’s sick sense of humor.  To wit:  well, if your flight lands too late to pick up the car by 11 pm, when we close, you can just get it tomorrow at six am! Problem solved! Oh, wait, you still have to drive over an hour to said wedding? And the airport closes, so you can’t actually sleep there?).  Also, I overcame my usual stoic wedding self and actually teared up thanks to the following, read at the start of the ceremony.  Enjoy.  And congratulations to the new couple–so happy for you both!

Excerpt from The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams

“What is REAL?” asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. “Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?”

“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but Really loves you, then you become Real.”

“Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.

“Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.”

“Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,” he asked, “or bit by bit?”

“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get all loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”

Service

Last night, in a whirlwind of cleaning, I essentially gutted my closet.  I parted ways with eight pairs of preciouses before I stopped counting.  Turns out watching me clean and organize exhausts the puppy.  Think how many walks I might have saved if I’d known this earlier. Think how clean my home would be.

In that spirit of out with the old, I perused this article this morning.  Thoughts?

Go, Bridget, Go

Modern Bride announced its bankruptcy today.  I like to think this is one small victory for Bridget Jones.

Testimonials

Let’s face, this blog is all about that puppy.  So here’s more to feed the fire.

First, in the last three weeks, I have gone on at least 40 walks.  This is a statistic that I cannot let go, and I hate numbers.  The puppy has gone on more than 40 walks, thanks to the mercy of others.

Second, taking the puppy anywhere prompts strangers to share their personal dog ownership testimonials.  Frankly, most of these are hair-raising.  Take, for instance, the woman walking a six-year-old, well-mannered Newfoundland who asked us how old our puppy was.  When we said seven months, she got, as the boyfriend described it, “a faraway look in her eyes.  Not in a good way.”  She then said, “I remember 7 months.  I cried every day.  Every day.”  I felt more vindicated than I can say.  The high/lowlights of her experience:  12 walks in one day and the time the dog rolled in poop.  I asked if she ever regretted keeping the dog; she said no, not really, mostly not.  A different woman mentioned that she also has a seven-month-old puppy.  ”Is he good?”  I asked.  Painful pause.  Long pause.  ”Well,” she finally mumbled, “he tries.  And he is mostly kind.”

Then there are friends who share their own stories of dog ownership.  One mentioned that her work colleague announced that getting a lab puppy set she and her husband back at least three years in their plans to have children.  Another example:  my friend E. informed me that each time I leave her house with the puppy, her husband announces, “Those people are crazy.  We’re never getting a dog.”  E. and husband have a real baby.  It worries me that they think we’re the crazy ones.  At a dinner party this weekend, a highly educated lawyer admitted that owning a lab puppy (note the trend here, note the trend) had caused her to sob when her fiance asked if she’d like to put the puppy in its crate and go to brunch one morning.  Why the sobbing?  As she explained to him, through sniffles, “babies can’t be put in crates and left behind.”  Since she couldn’t keep up with the puppy (who eventually ate a windowsill), she knew she couldn’t keep up with children.

In other words, labrador ownership unhinges those who were once rational and at–or so they thought–the top of their game.

While standing on a scenic beach overlooking a scenic bridge this weekend, I observed a bridge and groom arrived at the beach to take wedding pictures.  I knew I owned a lab, and that said lab was present and off his leash when my reaction was, immediately, “Oh, dear goodness, no.  Noooooooooo.”  That veil, snapping in the force of a forty mph wind, would be more temptation than the pup could take, and would probably create a story with a familiarly bad ending.  Summarized:  me, humiliated; dog, elated.  Thankfully, the dog didn’t notice the bride.  He was too busy retrieving his frisbee from behind the fence that distinguished the boundary between the accessible beach and the environmentally protected “fragile wildlife” sand dunes.

In which complete exhaustion overtakes our heroine . .

I no longer go to the gym; I no longer do a set amount of cardio four(ish) days a week; I no longer lift weights or do crunches (which I have hated since I was first introduced to them, anyway).  Why?

Because I bought one of those high-energy dogs.  One of those dogs that has a “two to three year puppyhood.”  One of those dogs that does not slow down.  No, not ever; no, never.  No time for slowing down.  There are geese to chase–stuffed and real.  There are other dogs to either harass or flee from.  There are tennis balls, and bones, apples in the Queso Dip’s backyard that need to be eaten right this instant, and pinecones, acorns, blades of grass, leaves blowing in the wind, enemies like the PG&E guy (I am sympathetic on this one) to chase away from the house, quail, cats–CATS–and random toddlers to befriend.

This means I now spend two hours each day (no exaggeration, I promise you) walking the dog, running the dog, throwing things for or at the dog, an figure that does not include the time spent discipling the dog, cajoling the dog, pulling the dog down from his countertop quest (there are APPLES up there, you know), hauling the dog out of my shoe collection, searching for the dog, and generally keeping track of the miscreant.

That said, I am exhausted.  I clearly no longer possess the body of a twenty-something-year-old.  Everything aches.  My knees creak from keeping up with his trot; my arms ache from pulling back on the leash all the bloody time to try to stop the trot.  But oh do I love this new part of life.  Today, as he saw his first real ducks, and sat down to watch them paddle out across a pond a few minutes after sunrise, I realized I’d chosen well.  I now see large parts of life that I have missed for years, such as sunrise (I was either asleep or in the gym before), baby bluebirds, fall mornings, and the occasional random pit bull named Thug.

You say conejos, I say . . .

Cojones.  Yes, cojones–the subject of a conversation the boyfriend and I had regarding the puppy’s increasing indecent behavior.

“I think,” opined myself, “things will improve when we have his cojones removed.”

“I think,” said the boyfriend, “you mean his conejos.“

“Let me assure you, I do not means his conejos.”

The boyfriend:  ”But I think you do.”

Me:  ”No, no I do not.  The dog does not have rabbits, he has testicles.”

The boyfriend:  ”Rabbits?  Rabbits?  Is that what conejos means?”

Why, yes it is.  But now, of course, we refer to the dog’s recent surgery (or at least I do), as the time he lost his rabbits.

The Only Thing Left

Three days before the new school year, the only thing left to organize in my office, or just about (minus my desk, which I gave up on a few years ago) is a stack of books on the Japanese-American Internment.  This stack has been out of place since last November.  The shelf where the books belong is actually only a foot or two away.  But, I put those books there on a Thursday afternoon after talking to one of my student’s about his senior project, about his family, and about the interviews he’d be conducting–in Japanese–that weekend with survivors of the internment.  I loaned him some books, and suggested others, which now make up their own pile.  Two days later, on a Saturday night, he and three other students died in a car accident.  When my colleague called to tell me that he had died, I was in my office; his quiz from Friday sat at the top of a different stack–to grade.  I know it is ridiculous sentimentality, or something, but I think I’ll leave those books there for awhile.  No one else would even notice them.  For me, they honor a student who had, quite suddenly, made my job an absolute joy as he came into his own.  As another fall begins, I’d like to remember him.

Calm Assertive, My Arse

A friend commented recently that owning a puppy prepares one for parenthood, and that I am particularly prepared for a toddler.  Am not sure how I feel about this at all, because at the rate we are going, my maternal instincts have been trounced by only one round of puppy vomiting, and two rounds of puppy bleeding.  Also, I hear it is illegal to keep your kids in a crate, something I do frequently with the puppy when I no longer wish to see him, or he no longer wishes to see me.  Admittedly, toddlers don’t tend to have really big teeth, so maybe that is a plus in the parenthood column.

That said, I also obsess that as puppy owners go, I’m a bit of a yuppie, minus the fact that I live in the middle of rural nowhere and don’t make enough money to pony up for any of the usual yuppie paraphernalia.  I came to this realization while standing at a park discussing dog behavior with the owner of a huge black lab.  He mentioned that his dog walker (I am my own dog walker) suggested that if the personal trainer already coming to his house for lessons with said dog didn’t work out, he could always try puppy boot camp.  Boot camp, he admitted, was a little on the pricey side, but the results might be worth it.  After two weeks away from you, the dog returns completely trained.  To my credit, I did not snicker when he said that doggie boot camp costs $900.

I also noticed that I’m verging on yuppiehood when an entire conversation with my neighbors involved comparing how our dogs behave, how we have utilized the “calm assertive” tips from “The Dog Whisperer” (who the boyfriend now calls by his first name and can quote when needed), and what developmental stage the dogs are at.  Give us a week, and we’ll have the dogs dressed up in prep school outfits, complete with the requisite argyle, competing to see which is in the top percentile of, I don’t know, anything.  Mensa for dogs, here we come.

The truth is that raising this dog has involved a lot more crying than I had imagined–and no, the puppy is not the one crying.  The exasperating part is all the advice you get–solicited and otherwise–from just about everyone.  My favorite so far, from a website on puppy behavior, went something like this: “Practice baring your teeth at the puppy; this is how adult dogs communicate with puppies, and he will understand this command best.”  Right.  I find my fake front tooth pretty scary, but I don’t think I’ll be flashing it at the puppy anytime soon.

Perhaps parenthood isn’t for me . . .

The dog got himself neutered the other day–brain surgery, says the vet tech.  I have to express some disappointment.  While I am glad the puppy didn’t yank out his own stitches (the sight of which makes me woozy), his restraint also means he got to forgo wearing the collar of shame.

And I had really been looking forward to capturing that on film.

Relief

I answered the phone this morning to hear my mother (who will no doubt absolutely love that this is now a blog) announce that the biopsy results we’d been waiting for since last Wednesday, the results that the doctor promised her she would get on Monday, were finally here.  ”Totally benign,” she said.  Now, most mothers might stop there, give you a brief pause to really relish the news that your mother would continue to be in good health.  But not my mother.  ”Now,” she announced somewhat smugly, “maybe you’ll believe your mother when she says something.”  Fair enough; she had predicted all along that she was fine and didn’t have cancer.  Quite frankly, this is one time when I’m actually happy to say, “You’re right, you’re right, you’re right.”

But the root of the problem is her credibility.  This is the same woman who spent most of my childhood trying to convince me that you accentuate the “p” in “pneumonia,” that you really draw it out, that you threaten small children running around after a bath without their clothes on that they will catch “peeeeenumonia.”  This caused me to hate the word.  In high school biology class, I had to remind myself to drop the “p” if we were reading anything out-loud in a group.  I actually avoid the word in lectures.  William Henry Harrison died from a, um, cold he caught at his inauguration.  No one cares about him anyway.

This is also the same woman who tried, at Yosemite one fall, to get me to believe that the park rangers turn on–or off, depending on the conditions–Bridal Veil Falls.  Park rangers, you’ll be glad to know, also put up–or take down–the mountains in Southern California.  You thought that was smog hiding them from view?  No, indeed, it was not.  So pardon me for being a little bit skeptical when she claimed to know the answer to the major question; that skepticism, however, has yet to overshadow my stark raving mad relief.